Muslims: GET OVER IT

[Tony4245]

Nice party hats. I can't really tell what they're doing, though.

Wow, what a bunch of hot supermodels...

 

[Tony4245]

I wonder what the reaction of a Government headed by Pat Robertson would be to blasphemy

I do most sincerely hope that you never ever find out.

 

[Kopji]

brettDbass

As ever, the picture here is being tainted by the appalling actions of the few being overblown out of all proportion and focussed on by the media to the point where the uninformed take it as truth because they have nowhere else to go for information.

Hi. Hummm. This describes everything that ever happens, I'm not sure I agree or disagree with you. Left on our own, the vast majority of us would prefer to live happily in peace. To some degree we are judged (and judge others) by the leaders we follow or allow to be our voice in the world.

I've known many Muslims in my lifetime and almost every one of them has been kind, generous, tolerant and respectful of the beliefs of others.
I've also known many Christians, Hindus, Catholics, Baptists and atheists (etc.) some of whom have been spiteful, greedy, selfish and intolerant of every other belief.

And me too. But yet the Mullahs and Pat Robertson still find audiences of millions. 'Osama' is still a popular name for Muslims to name their children. Am I angry at the multitude of sheep for the poor shepherds that lead them? No. I would prefer they stop being sheep.

All of this doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things. Most people are good "at heart", but inevitably some people are not. Grouping them together and labelling them all as "BAD" because of their religion (chosen, born into or otherwise) or even their place of birth is illogical and irrational.

Illogical AND irrational, O my. Maybe they will pray for me.

I simply don't understand this pressure put on us by the US, UK and AUS governments (covertly) and the media (overtly) to be prejudiced against any religion or nation. -

Don't forget the Sauds who are encouraging the boycott of products. Boycotts sound like good ideas but they have a downside. A Norwegian company laid off 100 workers because of Islamic boycotts. They had nothing to do with it. But you know, the next company that does business with the Sauds is going to know two things:
1: Companies doing business with Muslims have no customer loyalty, even after 40 years of doing business.

2: When business does resume, the prices will probably be much higher. This is because they are now aware that doing business with religious fanatics has higher risk, and this must somehow be absorbed into the model. (or they withdraw from the market, reducing competion which has similar effect)

 

[Kopji]

Ministers from 17 Arab countries urged Denmark to punish the newspaper. Arab League head Amr Moussa, who attended the Arab ministers' meeting, criticised the European press.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/4671204.stm

I mean, this makes me feel like we are not really making much progress in the 'Arab league' world. Punish a newspaper? Please. This sounds like the kind of bold posturing you do when you are afraid of being overthrown by masses of your angry subjects.

But that IS the way they really want the world to be. We in the west have lost the sense of sacredness etc etc. As if they were not awash in the blood of innocents. So yeah, I've lost that sense of their sacredness and they are part of the reason.

If they want to go on about it until the whole world is reprinting the cartoons, great.

geni
I know how hard it would be for 'Religion Inc' to just go away, and how terribly traumatic internal conflict over faith and belief can be. There are some religious spaces I hold a self imposed truce with.

 

[Kopji]

Ryokan's thread over on politics is officially much better than this one. Feel free to jump over the the actual cartoons:

linky

 

[Iacchus]

Islam was derived from Christianity and claims that its prophet (Muhammed) was the promised one of Christianity. Christians disagree and are still waiting.

Boy, that's the first I've ever heard of that.

 

[Melendwyr]

That is the only thing you can't be tolerant of.

That kind of "tolerance" isn't just useless, it's actively harmful.

No one tolerates everything and anything. No one wants to. Being intolerant is a good thing - it's all about what you won't tolerate.

 

[Zamzara]

Sorry to drag this back off topic, but:

It seems there was also an allegation that she had placed a quotation from the Quran in the window with the pigs, and that there was "a history of feuding between Ms Bennett, the owner of the china ornaments, and local Muslims".

Should this really make a difference? There is a history of feuding between most people on this board and religious fundamentalists, often with scripture quoted to make the fundies look stupid. But we don't expect the police to come round over it.

 

[NeilC]

The shop owner should have reported a break-in that morning - that's one way to guarantee they police won't bother to show up.

 

[Mojo]

Sorry to drag this back off topic, but:

It seems there was also an allegation that she had placed a quotation from the Quran in the window with the pigs, and that there was "a history of feuding between Ms Bennett, the owner of the china ornaments, and local Muslims".

Should this really make a difference? There is a history of feuding between most people on this board and religious fundamentalists, often with scripture quoted to make the fundies look stupid. But we don't expect the police to come round over it.

The context is very relevant, especially in view of her claim that she had no idea why people were offended:

It is beyond belief because I have had the pigs in my window for years and I usually bring them out around Christmas time. Why people should suddenly take offence to them I don’t understand.

The Quran quotation placed with the pigs suggests that this comment was somewhat disingenuous, and the history of feuding may explain what was actually going on.

 

[Kopji]

Can you say freedom fries with that?

Well sometimes you feel like nuts and sometimes you don't.

The general Muslim assertion that they get just as upset about portrayals of God or Jesus is laughably false. I am inclined to agree with the more nuanced idea that there are some people within the Muslim world who advocate a war of cultures and are using this opportunity to further that agenda. My response would be that if the 'everyday' Muslims are too tolerant of extremists to speak out against them, there WILL be a war and they will be swept up in it with the rest of us.

As it is, the two editors who precisely expressed my views were arrested for advocating moderation and understanding in Jordan.

The 'pigs in the window' incident is interesting. In the US positions like Judges and Police Chiefs are elected positions. If basic things like property rights are not upheld it can become a political issue and they can be replaced. If nobody cared, something like that could easily happen in the US, but it might make the news too. It seems like the UK works this way too, I hesitate to paint the whole country as going to hell in a hand-basket over an isolated incident.

I find the whole notion that religion deserves immunity from criticism or ridicule rather offensive. As 'blasphemy laws' were once explained to me, they are for my own protection because some religious people tend to be violently hotheaded and if I were allowed to freely express myself I might be in some kind of danger from them.

How do you argue with that kind of logic?

 

[ceo_esq]

In the US positions like Judges and Police Chiefs are elected positions.

For the record - and especially for the benefit of readers outside the United States - in the federal judicial system, all judges are appointed. In state judicial systems, trial or lower court judges are often elected; higher-level positions (state appellate judges or state supreme court justices) are, depending on the state in question, either appointed or elected (election may be by the public or by the state legislature). For example, roughly three-quarters of all New York State judges and justices are elected.

In small jurisdictions chiefs of police are often elected; in a city - particularly a large one - the chief of police is more likely to be an appointed position.

 

[Elind]

I think "supercoolguy" is a Muslim.

He's what we might call a lapsed Muslim, I think, but very knowledgable and informative.

 

[Elind]

I've known many Muslims in my lifetime and almost every one of them has been kind, generous, tolerant and respectful of the beliefs of others.

So have I, and I've lived in their countries, but you know what; I never debated their religion and I knew that if I said the wrong thing to the wrong person my ass was grass (if I had filled in aetheist on the immigration forms, where it said religion, I wouldn't have been let in).

Otherwise, cool people and they liked a drink now and then too, but limits are limits and never to be ignored.

 

[Kopji]

For the record - and especially for the benefit of readers outside the United States - in the federal judicial system, all judges are appointed. In state judicial systems, trial or lower court judges are often elected; higher-level positions (state appellate judges or state supreme court justices) are, depending on the state in question, either appointed or elected (election may be by the public or by the state legislature). For example, roughly three-quarters of all New York State judges and justices are elected.

In small jurisdictions chiefs of police are often elected; in a city - particularly a large one - the chief of police is more likely to be an appointed position.

thanks ceo_esq,
I was thinking in terms of the local judiciary & police but I stand corrected.

An essay I think that is worth reading is one written way back in 1993:
http://www.alamut.com/subj/economics/misc/clash.html
Samuel P. Huntington The Clash of Civilizations

I have a vague sense of unease that 'secular' part of western civilization is beginning to fail. Will we become even more marginalized as the world attempts to peacefully reconcile the larger issues of culture?

Certainly there seems a kind of mutual affinity between Christian & Muslim values. The Vatican and Muslim Nations seem all too willing to jettison press freedom so they may exist together in peace.

The Muslim reaction to the cartoons probably represents one of these 'cultural fracture lines' the article I linked to discusses, but I am not as sure about the 'pig story'. For every woman putting pigs in her window there is probably another one doing something nice for Muslims. We all struggle on a personal level how to get along but the effect on our larger culture would seem to be gradual. The cultural divide between the US and the UK sometimes seems small and sometimes more wide. The pig story seems like one of the wider ones. If that event happened here there would probably be quite a lot of political damage to go with it.

 

[Pidge]

After hearing, reading and watching the news about the cartoons, and discussing with colleagues at work, one pointed out that he'd gone to do find the cartoons, and in a site / forum which has a significant collection of cartoons that would be considered offensive to Islam, one reader posted a link to faithfreedom.org.

The site's owner, Ali Sina, is a former Muslim who appears to have done a lot of reading of the Koran, and has pulled out a long list of contradictions, fallacies and other errors. Oh, and has declared that Mohammad was a number of things you would not expect the leader of a "peaceful" religion to be... See Ali's challenge to Mulsims.

 

[Ryokan]

See Ali's challenge to Mulsims.

And what do you have to do to win the challenge? Prove a negative....

 

[SuperCoolGuy]

And what do you have to do to win the challenge? Prove a negative....

It's a pretty complicated and involved process to get the money. Basically, you have to read all the articles on the site, cite evidence to the contrary, wait for the web-site owner to disagree with your evidence, and then not get the money.

It's like answering the challenge in the Qu'ran, which ask any human to produce a verse similar to any of its verses. Since the Qu'ran is from God, no human should be able to make such a verse. The criteria is vague, and the judges are ultimately Qu'ranic scholars who would never acknowledge that a human could achieve the result without requiring the scholar to give up on their belief that the Qu'ran is from God and that the challenge had been met. So no one ever wins even though plenty have tried and arguably have succeeded.

 

[I'll_buy_that]

I really never thought i would see this headline in my lifetime

Four die in fresh cartoon protests

 

[Renfield]

Unfortunately, the Muslim world's perception is being defined by its' loonies. Not unlike how the U.S. is about to be with Scalito getting on the court. Just think... we get to experience 19th century civil rights all over again!

I'll take our loonies over their's any day.